Oh! It’s not? Then is the pens…

No dear ‘Dutchie’, I beg to differ. By large St Joseph Convent, Sliema had impeccable written English, unsurpassed diction and excellent deportment. I say ‘had’ because in my time (before populist Mr. Mintoff pulled the class strings and destroyed education in general so that our children now can neither speak & spell Maltese or English properly) our teachers were mostly foreign nuns coming from the best English, Irish, French and Italian families.

Our lay teachers were equally unsurpassable. We were made to take pages of the Concise Oxford Dictionary and literally study it for the duration of the scholastic year. We were taught how to express ourselves eloquently and unequivocally verbally or in writing, we were taught etiquette, how to sit and eat properly at table.

We wore hats, changed uniforms according to what time of day it was and which activity we were taking part in. None of us ‘is the pensed’ for sure. Now if Debbie Tad-Divorzju has appalling spelling and attended St Joseph Convent, Sliema it is highly offensive and discriminatory to judge her low education and appalling spelling by the school she attended.

It is insulting to all those girls and boys who went to this excellent school and excelled in their careers. ‘Thank you Dumink!…your beloved Debbie’….or maybe she could be dyslexic? That’s a bit kinder.

That’s nothing.

I was chatting with Kenneth Zammit Tabona the other day, about the Manoel’s concert schedule. “I look forward to seeing your great pianist tonight,” I said.

Imagine my surprise when…

And when the newscaster of the News in English on TVM stated that “You Ass President said…” (read U.S. President…)

Careful there. Someone who writes “from now on wards as it will be cheaper” and “Bye the way” should not be so quick to call others ignoramuses.

Having chosen English as the preferred language in the EU, the European
Parliament has commissioned a feasibility study in ways of improving
efficiency in communications between departments.

European officials have often pointed out that English spelling is
unnecessarily difficult; for example: cough, plough, rough, through and
thorough. What is clearly needed is a phased program of changes to iron
out these anomalies. The program would, of course, be administered by a
committee staff at top level by participating nations.

In the first year, for example, the committee would suggest using ‘s’
instead of the soft ‘c’. Sertainly, sivil servants in all sities would
resieve this news with joy. Then the hard ‘c’ could be replaced by ‘k’
sinse both letters are pronounsed alike. Not only would this klear up
konfusion in the minds of klerikal workers, but typewriters kould be made
with one less letter.

There would be growing enthusiasm when in the sekond year, it was anounsed
that the troublesome ‘ph’ would henseforth be written ‘f’. This would make
words like ‘fotograf’ twenty per sent shorter in print.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted
to reash the stage where more komplikated shanges are possible.
Governments would enkourage the removal of double letters which have
always been a deterent to akurate speling.

We would al agre that the horible mes of silent ‘e’s in the languag is
disgrasful. Therefor we kould drop thes and kontinu to read and writ as
though nothing had hapend. By this tim it would be four years sins the
skem began and peopl would be reseptive to steps sutsh as replasing ‘th’
by ‘z’. Perhaps zen ze funktion of ‘w’ kould be taken on by ‘v’, vitsh is,
after al, half a ‘w’. Shortly after zis, ze unesesary ‘o’ kould be dropd
from words kontaining ‘ou’. Similar arguments vud of kors be aplid to ozer
kombinations of leters.

Kontinuing zis proses yer after yer, ve vud eventuli hav a reli sensibl
riten styl. After tventi yers zer vud be no mor trubls, difikultis and
evrivun vud fin it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze drems of ze Guvernmnt
vud finali hav kum tru.

‘a pullet surprise.’ Brilliant. Must remember this one. It’s almost as good as the news reader reading IOC (International Olympic Committee) as ‘ten cents.’